From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: David Miller Subject: Re: [PATCH] sky2: set carrier off in probe Date: Fri, 30 Oct 2009 11:20:51 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <20091030.112051.20510373.davem@davemloft.net> References: <20091030155420.GA8345@gondor.apana.org.au> <20091030.111027.234994529.davem@davemloft.net> <20091030181632.GA9530@gondor.apana.org.au> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: bphilips@suse.de, shemminger@linux-foundation.org, netdev@vger.kernel.org To: herbert@gondor.apana.org.au Return-path: Received: from 74-93-104-97-Washington.hfc.comcastbusiness.net ([74.93.104.97]:38789 "EHLO sunset.davemloft.net" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932721AbZJ3SU1 (ORCPT ); Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:20:27 -0400 In-Reply-To: <20091030181632.GA9530@gondor.apana.org.au> Sender: netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: From: Herbert Xu Date: Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:16:32 -0400 > On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 11:10:27AM -0700, David Miller wrote: > . >> Because the driver must start in state with carrier off anyways, >> so that we get the transition event when the device comes up >> from link down to link up. > > Well we want all drivers to start in state NOCARRIER. However, > a freshly allocated netdev has the NOCARRIER bit off. This means > every single driver has to set the NOCARRIER bit. > > It would seem much easier to ensure that the NOCARRIER bit is set > in a newly allocated netdev. Since many drivers (especially virtual software ones) do not manage carrier state and therefore that's why we start in state carrier on. We've had this discussion a few times before, most recently with Rusty wrt. virtio :-)